Children's Language Assessment--Situational Tasks.

The Children's Language Assessment-Situational Tasks (CLA-ST) was developed to collect language samples within a normally operating classroom. The language is taken on a cassette tape recorder, which is placed at the foot of a small table. At this table, in a committee setting, four children are engaged with a teacher in an activity similar to those they encounter daily. The CLA-ST is broken into three segments: the first, with their own classroom teacher, utilizes a "mystery bag" containing 27 common household objects (15 minutes); the second, with a new adult (a staff research assistant), uses a set of eight picture cards that have no set solution (15 minutes); in the third, the children are left alone (five minutes), with the tape recorder running, while the adult excuses herself briefly. These three segments are intended to get different perspectives on children's language development. The first should resemble very closely children's typical use of language in the classroom. The second segment assesses whether their language style is modified in the presence of an unfamiliar adult. The third segment seeks to simulate other studies of natural language, and the children are left alone with the cards and the tape recorder running. The tapes are returned to the Arizona Center for transcription and analysis. The information is broken down into free flow format which identifies teacher and child output. These are then submitted to an analysis for basic language dimensions. (Author/DEP)